Seventeen hundred and seventy seventy seventy seventy....

Bring on the old lady who thinks she's a revolutionary war hero with the gift of prophecy. She wears her flannel pajama tops and knee breeches and buckled shoes when she feeds the cats. She hides her war shield, a brass gorget embossed with the eagle in flight under her secretarial blouse at her shabby desk during the day. Her hair is white and straight and stringy and worn ponytail style. She knows the battle of Trenton because she has fought it, walked it and still visits the bridge over the Assunpink creek where her comrades fell and the British fled. Everyone wears their personal space like a suit of armor when they know this about her. Some believe her truth and are afraid their reality might slip back into some earlier time, they could not handle it as well as she. If insanity is to be pitied, she gains from it, finds living strength in it.

A young boy, the fiery center of this tall tale watches from across the street. Rachel Mary Essex, ancient and strikingly beautiful in her tri-corner hat with its purple ribbon and holly sprig, presses down with a hand forged iron paddle on her burning trash barrel of leaves. A shower of acid colored embers rises in a gust of wind. They share a glance, boy and old woman, then a perceiving look and then, recognition. Who will cross the street first?